The Karelian Refugees during WWII and Their Photographic Narrative from 1940 to 2002

Abstract

This article explores the photographic representation of the evacuations from the former Finnish Karelia in the late 1930s until mid-1940s in military history photobooks. It examines from a comparative perspective the images taken during the evacuation process - before, during and after the Winter War (1939-1940) as well as during and after the Continuation War (1941-1944). Thereby it pays special attention to the construction of pictorial narratives about the evacuation, and it investigates the motives behind the choice of these narratives and how they changed over time. Furthermore, it asks whether the narratives in the photobooks differ from those in the archives - and if so, in what respect. The article seeks to determine whether there are topics that are only reflected in the archived photographs but do not appear in the books, or vice versa. One of the aims of this study is to identify the influence of the images on the Finnish cultural memory of the evacuation processes. The article is ultimately a contribution to the understanding about the iconography of large-scale population transfers in the history of Eastern Europe and the power of photographs in constructing cultural memory